If You Want to

Feel Better, Never Ask

an Evil Vampire a Question

—Jaxon—

I’m out the front door before Grace can even make it down the first step.

I know I should probably stick around, but I can’t do that. Not right now. Not when she’s got that bandage on her neck and other ones on her arm and cheek. And not when I know that I’m the asshole who did it to her.

I close my eyes for a second—just a second—and it all flashes back. The earthquake. The window exploding under the force of my power. The moment the glass sliced into Grace’s neck.

I’ve never been more terrified in my life. Fear isn’t something I experience very often—when you’re the scariest thing in the night, you tend to not worry about what else is bumping along next to you. But watching that glass hit Grace, watching her blood spray all over the room and realizing the glass had sliced an artery… Yeah, terrified doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt.

The next five minutes are a blur. I remember licking her throat closed in an effort to stop the blood, remember bits and pieces of gathering her in my arms, but fade full-out for Marise as Grace lay white and still in my arms.

I’d nearly killed her because I couldn’t control myself.

Nearly killed her just because being near her makes me feel so much that I can’t lock it away.

Nearly killed her because when it comes to her, I’m weak. So weak that I unwittingly let the energy build up and nearly mated her without even asking her permission.

It’s a humbling realization…and an awful one. I’ve spent my entire life protecting people from the terrible power and unchecked selfishness of my family. And now, three days with my mate and suddenly I’m blowing out windows, shaking the fucking earth, and nearly bonding with her without even letting her know what’s going on?

What the fuck am I thinking?

But that’s just it. I haven’t been thinking, not since I walked down those stairs that first evening and saw Grace standing by the chess table. From that moment on, all I’ve been thinking about is making her mine. And now she’s nearly died, twice, all because I can’t get my shit together enough to take care of her—to watch over her—the way I should.

But what’s the alternative to us being there together? Leave Katmere Academy—school to the children of the most influential monsters in the world—right now, when we’re on the brink of yet another war? Especially when that war has been largely caused by my own family?

Or should I get Grace to leave? I already tried that the first day, all but ordering her to get the hell out because I wanted her more than I’ve ever wanted anything—a feeling that only grows with each day she’s here. She didn’t go when I told her to because she couldn’t, because she doesn’t have anywhere else to be.

Because she belongs at Katmere Academy, the animalistic voice deep down inside me snarls. More, she belongs with me.

Because she’s my mate. My mate.

Even after five days, I still can’t get over the wonder and the terror that one simple word engenders in me.

Every vampire has a mate, but finding them in your first two hundred years is practically unimaginable. Byron found Vivien early, but that’s because they were born into the same small town in France and were raised together as friends long before they ever knew they were mates. The rest of us just have to bumble around until we find ours…and that’s if we’re lucky.

I haven’t told anyone else about Grace, not even Mekhi or Byron, because labeling her as such puts her in even more jeopardy than she’s already in. Which, apparently, is a hell of a lot, considering her mate can’t even fucking protect her from himself.

I never should have gone to her room today. I should have left Grace the hell alone. But I’m selfish and I’m weak and I couldn’t not see her. I couldn’t not check on her, couldn’t not make sure she was okay, no matter how much doing so fucked things up even more.

But that was before I saw her over Macy’s shoulder, covered in cuts and bruises from the flying glass. Battered, bandaged, broken. And realized, mate or not, the best thing I can do for her is to leave her the fuck alone.

The thought has me recoiling, has the monster deep inside me screaming in rage. But that just makes me move faster, desperate to put as much distance between Grace and me as I possibly can.

There are miles between us now, and still it isn’t enough. Still, I can feel her blood calling out to me, her taste like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. When I licked the small drop of her blood off my thumb that very first night, the taste of her nearly brought me to my knees. Last night was worse. I wanted her blood even as it spilled over me, even as I tried desperately to staunch the flow that would kill her if left unchecked.

I already know I’m a monster, but what does that need—that craving—in the middle of a life-and-death crisis make me? Desperate? Evil? Irredeemable?

And when did that happen? When I killed Hudson? Or years, decades, before?

I keep fading, even though I don’t have a clue where I’m going, as I race across the snow. It doesn’t really matter, though, as long as it’s far away from Katmere…and from Grace. I can’t think when she’s that close, her blood calling to me—one more temptation that I can’t afford to give in to.

Not if I want to keep her safe.

Not if I want to keep her whole.

And I do, more even than I want to make her mine.

It’s that thought that finally gives me direction. A quick glance at the GPS on my phone tells me just how close I already am to my newly decided-on destination. So close that I can’t help wondering if my subconscious was guiding me here all along.

I take a quick left at the base of a mountain I once lifted a hundred feet in the air—a training exercise for twelve-year-old me—and fade another twenty miles through the snow to an ice cave whose entrance is almost completely obscured by the snow at the base of the mountains that surround it.

I pause when I reach it, take a minute to get my thoughts, and the rest of me, under tight control. The Bloodletter might be the mentor who taught me almost everything I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier to go in there. The most vicious and powerful vampire in existence, the Bloodletter is an expert at ferreting out weakness. And then using it to destroy you with barely more than a word or two.

I spent twenty-five years of my life right here in this cave at the queen’s insistence, learning to harness my powers. And how to use them to destroy any enemies of the throne, also at the queen’s insistence. The Bloodletter made sure I could do all of that…and so much more. It’s been a blessing and a curse.

When I’ve finally got my defenses in place, any thoughts of Grace shoved down deep inside me, I take a few long breaths. And begin my descent into the ice.